Playing Dead (40 page)

‘Well, the car’s waiting,’ said Alberto. He kissed Annie’s cheek briefly. ‘We must go. See you soon, yeah?’

‘You will,’ Annie promised.

When they were gone, Max came down the stairs and crossed the hall to where she stood.

‘That was touching,’ he said.

Annie blinked. ‘Don’t start,’ she said.

Actually, it had been
extremely
touching and she found she had tears in her eyes. She loved Alberto, he truly was like a son to her. Or, at least, given their ages, a brother. And Daniella – well, who could fail to like her? She was so sweet and innocent, and it was gut-wrenchingly sad to think that life with Lucco was going to make a hardened and bitter woman out of her.

‘Where’s Layla?’ she asked. That was always the question she asked him every time she saw him now. She had no idea what he was still doing here. He should have left by now, taking her daughter with him.

‘Playing with Gerda out the back, by the pool. Why?’

Annie shrugged. He was toying with her. Just batting her around like a cat with a mouse until he decided to act. She knew it. ‘No reason.’

‘He’s very like Constantine,’ Max went on. ‘Wouldn’t you say?’

Annie stiffened. There he went again, making reference to Alberto’s looks and making snide insinuations.

‘No, actually I
wouldn’t
say that,’ she told him coldly. ‘Constantine will be impossible to replace. Alberto might
look
like him, but does he have the extra qualities required? I don’t know.’

‘He’s got his hands full with that smarmy little bastard Lucco, that’s for sure.’

‘In what way?’

‘Him and Lucco had equal shares while Constantine was the godfather. They answered directly to him and he commanded them and the troops below them; he had it all stitched up tight. But now . . . well, don’t tell me you haven’t noticed? Lucco’s unstable and ambitious, and that’s not a good combination. He wants complete control.’

‘But he’s got that.’

‘Alberto’s a threat.’

‘Alberto’s his
brother.
’

‘You think that matters? Lucco can’t hold it together, but he won’t share power with anyone. As the eldest son and as a mean, nasty little fucker he wants it all and he don’t want anyone looking smarter than he is. So Alberto had better be bloody careful,’ said Max.

Chapter 84

The tall blond one had followed him, but Frances had shaken him off. When he finally made his way back to Whereys, the first thing he saw was a For Sale sign outside. He swore and kicked it and shoved at it until it was down.

Then he went to the front door and found it boarded up. He kicked the boards until he was able to get in, not noticing that his shoe had disintegrated and that his foot was bleeding.

Sweating, panting and gasping with temper and effort, his tongue constantly snaking out to moisten his lips, he went through to the back door. That too was boarded, and he roared with rage and attacked it, wrenching at the boards, tearing at the nails, until his hands were bloody, the nails torn, the skin a mass of cuts and scrapes.

He burst through the door at last and went out to the workshop with its stupid horseshoe over the door. He yanked the thing down and hurled it out into the wilderness of the back garden. His father had never loved him. He had never loved his mother, either. After all, hadn’t she always told her son that he was a secret: Daddy’s dirty little secret?

‘She did, she said that,’ he muttered to himself.

So he and his mother had clung together, but then that had changed. She had started inviting the men in – strange, frightening men who drank – and that made him very scared. And angry too.

‘He should have been there with us, but he never was,’ Frances mumbled.

And that was how it happened
, thought Frances, going into the gloomy workshop. He hadn’t
meant
for it to happen, but the men had been there again, drinking, and his mother had been laughing and running in and out of the rooms with them, half dressed, and when at last they’d gone she’d said she was going for a soak.

‘Frances, baby, pass me that bottle will you . . .?’ she’d said, lolling there naked in the tub, just like she’d been naked earlier in the evening and on so many evenings before that, drinking and shrieking with laughter and falling onto the bed with the men, doing bad things there while the music played on and on and he clamped his hands over his ears to try to shut it all out.

He wanted it to
stop.

So he picked up the half-full gin bottle like she asked, and smashed her over the head with it.

He hadn’t
meant
to.

He had just been upset, scared. And angry. One quick
whack
with the bottle – he put all his strength behind it – had felt like a moment of blissful release. She’d screamed once, then he hit her again with it. And then she’d gone quiet and she’d sunk under the water a bit.

He’d gone out the back and flung the bottle away, way out into the Hollywood Hills, never to be found. He’d felt bad then, because he’d done that, hit Mommy. He thought he ought to go back in, so he did; he went to the bathroom and her head was above the water now, but there was blood on her face and in the tub but she was quiet. Then he’d got scared again because Daddy wasn’t there, he was
never
there, and so Frances had phoned for help, for an ambulance.

Now he stood in his father’s workshop. He dumped the grenade back in the box with the others, then for long moments he just stood there, stock-still, like a robot with a short-circuit while his mind replayed that night in all its horror.

Finally, he stirred, and remembered what he’d come in here for. He started looking around.

Ah yeah. There
it was. He pulled out an orange plastic can from the heaps of detritus.

Now he had it.

Gasoline.

He splashed it all around the lower storey of the house, found matches in the kitchen drawer, then retreated to the ruined front door. He wasn’t a fool, he wasn’t
mad
, not like dear old dad, no way. He knew you had to keep back. He lit a match, and tossed it inside.

Whooomphh!

Oh, he loved that sound, the cleansing sound of destruction. He stepped back, onto the path, driven there by the suddenly erupting ferocity of the heat. He smiled and watched his father’s home start to burn, and then he turned and walked down the path to the gate. The lanky blond-haired man was standing there. He hadn’t lost him after all.

‘Hey, freak,’ said Gary Tooley, and started towards him.

This time, Frances didn’t bother to run. Now would be a good time to finish it, after all. Neat. Sort of
fitting.

He stood there, and waited for whatever came next.

Chapter 85

Annie was sitting at Constantine’s desk in his study, just soaking up the atmosphere, feeling him close to her somehow . . . but not close enough. He was gone. She was trying to convince herself otherwise by sitting here brooding like this, but that was the truth of the matter. He was gone, and he would never return.

He didn’t visit her in nightmares any more. She was puzzled by that. She had grown so used to those horrors unravelling in her sleeping brain, so used to seeing him as a spectre, a hideously deformed and threatening thing that came to terrorize her in the night, that she had believed she would feel this way forever.

But . . . no. Slowly the dreams had receded and now she didn’t get them at all.

He was gone.

The door opened and Max stepped inside the room, closing it softly behind him.

And maybe that’s down to him
, Annie thought, watching him as he crossed the room to where she sat.

Max had taken to sharing her bed most nights now, and she didn’t mean to, but nearly every morning she woke up clinging to him as a child clings to a favourite toy.

But Max was no real comfort to her. Rather, he was a threat. To him, the sex meant nothing. He was going to take Layla from her one day.

He came to the desk and sat down in one of the chairs on the opposite side.

For her, it was so different. She loved him. She always had, always would.

But he couldn’t let go of the hurt she’d caused him. And when Max was hurt, he lashed out. He sought revenge. And there could be no surer way to hurt her than to tear Layla from her side.

‘Thought I’d find you in here. All packed up? Ready to go?’

Tomorrow, she would fly out on Concorde to check that Sonny had put the last touches to the club to have it ready for the opening. She still had to accept the fact that Lucco was co-owner – there was no way around that; but she was still majority shareholder, so fuck him. She’d booked tickets for herself, Layla and Gerda, but she had no confidence that Max would let Layla go with her.

But if he
did
, here was the plan. After the opening, she was just going to take off in the States with Layla; they would lose themselves somewhere out there. It was a big country. He wouldn’t have the boys there to keep tabs on her. She could lose him, she knew she could do it. Start a new life for her and Layla somewhere, maybe California. Who knew?

‘Yep, we’re all packed up. Me and Layla and Gerda.’

‘Good. Only I saw the tickets on your dressing table, and you forgot to include me.’

‘What?’ Annie stared at him.

‘I’m sure it was an oversight. I’ll book mine this afternoon.’

‘
What?
’

Max looked at her in mock exasperation.

‘What do you mean, “what?”? I’m your fucking minder, remember? Where you go, I go.’

‘But I didn’t think you’d want to.’ Her heart was hammering and her mouth was dry as ashes. So much for her plan. He meant it: he was coming with her. ‘Look, you don’t have to,’ she said hurriedly.

‘I’m coming,’ he said.

‘But you’ve got the manor to run. The boys . . .’

‘The boys have been running the damned manor without me; they can carry on doing it. No problem. So I’m coming with you.’

‘But you—’

‘No buts.’ He stood up, leaned over the desk and kissed her hard on the lips. ‘You and me,
kemo sabe.
We go together.’

Yep. There went her plan, right out the window.

So . . . she’d have to think of another one.

Chapter 86

‘Shit, will you look at this?’ said the fireman to his pal.

There had been a call-out from a nearby neighbour earlier in the evening, saying there was a fire at an unoccupied house called Whereys, down the lane. Now it was gone eleven, and the arc lights were glaring all around the sodden, smouldering wreckage of what had once been an expensive and elegant Victorian rectory. The huge cluster of barley-twist chimney pots was still standing, but little else remained.

The crew were still damping-down, spraying the shell of the interior, when one of them all but fell over the dead body in the hall. They called the chief, and he came and looked down at the blackened, curled-up remnants of what had once been a human being.

‘Poor bastard,’ he said. ‘Thought the neighbours said no one was here?’

‘Chief!’ One of the crew had been out at the back, making sure the fire had not spread to the outbuildings. ‘You’d better come and see this . . .’

The chief fire officer followed his colleague out to the workshop behind the gutted property. It was intact; the flames hadn’t reached it. And just as well. ‘If this lot had gone up . . .’ said the chief, looking around in wonder at the armoury inside the workshop. There were guns, knives, Samurai swords, but worse – there were also grenades and a box full of detonators.

‘Yeah. Would have made the mess the house is in look like nothing.’

The chief chewed his lip. An unexplained corpse. A cache of arms.

‘Better call in the police,’ he said.

Chapter 87

‘Hiya, babe, you all right?’ asked Dolly.

It was later the same day and Max had dropped her off at the Palermo. He’d already shown her the Blue Parrot and the Shalimar – all three clubs had taken back their old names; the red neon ‘Annie’s’ signs had been pulled down.

Max was back in charge here now. He was making it plain, stamping his authority on the situation once again. Gary and Steve seemed happy to move aside and let him take over. Once the baddest of bad boys, she knew he’d been shocked to find that the Carter firm under Annie’s guidance had become a practically legitimate security operation stretching out from the city to cover most of Essex.

Annie wondered if he’d ever go back to the old ways, the days of heists and the hard game. She hoped not. Sooner or later, some keen copper was going to nail him, and then he’d go down for a long stretch. The thought of him caged up was painful to her. And what did that make her, she wondered? But she knew. She was a soft bloody fool where he was concerned, she always had been.

He kept dropping her off here and there, fielding her anxious enquiries about wasn’t he coming in with her, what was
he
going to do? And when he half smiled at her, she knew that he could read her mind – that she was wondering was this going to be the time he took Layla from her, when her back was turned?

Annie tried to get her mind off the subject. In the States, she would work things out. Alberto would help her. She could still win this.

Yeah, and when you do, you’ll lose the man you love – and you’ll lose Layla her father, too.

The club was busy with punters, go-go dancers and the pounding hypnotic beat of George Harrison singing ‘My Sweet Lord’
.
Dolly was sitting at the bar while the barman rushed back and forth taking orders when Annie pushed through the throng and joined her there.

‘I’m fine,’ said Annie. ‘You?’

‘Yep, fine and dandy.’ Dolly was sitting on a bar stool swinging one elegantly shod foot along to the music. She was sipping a gin and tonic. ‘Drink?’

Annie shook her head. ‘How’s it going now the old names are back over the door?’ she asked her.